Molly Sweeney

By Brian Friel

Book Overview

"Dispassionate eloquence and psychological honesty.... Brian Friel's writing has such vitality and warmth, such kindly accuracy of observation." - London Sunday Times From one of Ireland's best living playwrights, this striking piece of dramatic writing is a daring piece of theater. Keeping the play's three characters on stage at all times to speak directly to the audience, Brian Friel presents three points of view to the same intriguing tale. Molly herself, blind since she was an infant, tells of her world before and after an operation to try to restore her sight. Her husband, itinerant champion of good causes, talks of his passion to help her. Her once famous eye surgeon, now a whiskey-sodden recluse in Donegal, sees the operation as his chance to reclaim his reputation. Each of their voices interweaves, threading in and out with details, spinning a lush and sensate narrative, and carrying us effortlessly to an unexpected and poignant conclusion. Deceptively simple, yet richly multilayered--combining both an insightful story about the way we perceive our existence with an allegory for our times-- Molly Sweeney is an Irish storyteller's art to create an unforgettable theater piece, painting scenery and rousing emotions with nothing more than the simple purity of beautifully rendered words.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452275083
• ISBN13: 9780452275089
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Penguin Adult Hc/Tr
• Length: 98 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Outstanding to READ

This was fascinating to read. Three characters deliver a monologue relating to Molly's experiences temporarily regaining her vision through surgery. In addition to the clear & interesting portraits of these people, scientific information is presented in an easy to understand manner. However, unlike other good plays I have read I have no interest in seeing the play performed. What does seeing this play add to the experience of reading the play? But definitely read it!

Three powerful soliloquies add up to one fascinating drama.

Brian Friel, Ireland's premier modern dramatist, produces a minimalist ensemble drama in this 1995 play, presenting a story of immense dramatic power with no dramatic action on stage at all. Molly Sweeney, a forty-year-old woman who lost her sight when she was a baby, is the central character, the two others being her husband Frank, and Mr. Rice, a man whose surgical skill can return partial sight to her. When the play opens, all three characters inhabit their own spaces on stage, and each tells his/her story directly to the audience, the characters having no interaction with each other at all. In a brilliant example of dramatic irony, the play comes fully to life through their stories and achieves a poignant reality though the audience never actually sees any action. In this way, the play's structure parallels the life of Molly, a woman who sees nothing but fully experiences the joy of life. Molly is fully independent, works as a massage therapist in a local health club, and, in fact, supports her husband, who is unemployed, considering her life completely "normal." When she has the opportunity to regain partial sight, she accepts the surgery at the behest of her husband and the surgeon, a man so dependent on alcohol that he sees the surgery as his last chance to restart his career. Through the story of the surgery and how it changes the lives of the three characters, Friel forces the audience to consider important aspects of reality and how we interpret it. As he points out during the play, a functioning person without sight has created "engrams" of reality based on the other senses and must be taught how to connect new visual knowledge with the tactile engrams of his/her life if s/he is to be successful in understanding a sighted world. The gaining of sight involves the loss of the blind person's known world and the creation of a world in which everything is constantly moving and changing, "all the consolations of...the familiar" gone forever. Friel brilliantly recreates the drama of all three main characters as they try to cope emotionally with the changes wrought by Molly's surgery. Ultimately, the play raises complex questions about fantasy vs. fact, and imagination vs. reality and suggests that these concepts may not be the opposites that many of us think them. The unusual format of the play itself is perfectly suited to this subject matter, asking us to imagine each character's invisible, but nevertheless completely real, inner life. Mary Whipple

Change your life

This year i have had the privalege of not only reading Molly Sweeney, by Brian Friel, But also playing the part of Molly. Never have i read such a brillant work of literature. The heroine,strong willed and enchanting goes through a series of operations to try and restore her vision. Through the sucesses and pitfalls of this procedure Molly shows us what true vulnerability and dreams are made of. She posesses an inner strength that can be understood only by those who have been caught between two worlds, never to re-enter either of them. She has taught me to appreciate everything I see. For she relished the world and all the beauty in it.. while those of us with vision are blind to its miracles. indeed, We are the ones with blindsight. I have never played a character I have loved as much as Molly. She took over my body and soul on stage until i existed only as her vessel.... her unique personality shining through teaching us all to value what we have, to love what we are given, and to venture into the unknown.. even if it means loosing everything we've ever understood. Brian Friel is a modern day shakespeare. Truly my favorite playwright of the 20th century, he is also my mentor, and my inspiration. Molly Sweeney is truly a miracle in print.It will change your life.

It will change the way you look at things forever

I Just finished this play and loved it. In fact, I found it so moving and powerfull that I was anable to close my eyes because of the haunting ramifications described in this play. I had no choice but to write this review at 2:30 AM. This play tells the story of a women who undergoes a surgery in order to regain her sight, and the aftermath of that surgery. It is told in a seris of monologues by the three central characters in the show to brilliant perfection. Read this play, it will change the way you look at the world forever

Neuropsychologists, see or read this play!

Anyone interested in the neuropsychology of vision must see or read this play! *Molly Sweeney* is great drama by an award winning playwright. It tells more of the truth about failed attempts to restore vision in those blinded by cataracts in early childhood than "To See and Not See" in *An Anthropologist on Mars*. "Molly Sweeney" should be required reading for anyone interested in "Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine."